Thursday, 27 August 2009

The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture edited by Sang Lee and Ruth Baumeister 010 Rotterdam 2007

This volume brings together a heterogeneous collection of images, essays and conversations to probe around the issue of globalization and architecture, and the many and varied products of this phenomenon. From the position of the present economic circumstances it might well be that some of the impulses portrayed will be curtailed, and therefore this book will be a useful document of some of the attitudes of the period up to the year of its publication, produced in a seductive style which concentrates attention on physical manifestations, planned and unplanned. There is a mixture of leading international practitioners and younger researchers whose work is solely unified by its very diversity. But this attempt to construct a theory around issues of architectural and social identity suggests the setting up of a pervasive paradox—that a cultural phenomenon which is regarded as immediately apparent and visible, which receives much popular commentary, and which yet seems to require explanation in the most excluding language.The problem is exposed both in the book's structure and its content. The process of globalization certainly exists and neither, despite the appeal of novelty, is it a new phenomenon, merely an accelerated one. Therefore, it is so encompassing in cultural history that it is difficult to consider with anything like objectivity. Its relationships to post-modernism and modernism alike imply that the twin-headed monster of uniformity and eclecticism stalks this particular architectural labyrinth. The phrase 'anything goes' springs unaccountably to mind, although translated into the intellectual Esperanto favoured by the evangelists of form over content. Surely, globalization is a phenomenon constructed on the very different aspirations of the global 'player' and the migrant worker, and therefore fundamentally dependent on the perspective provided by one's economic status? How will this situation play out in the present global economic crisis?Notwithstanding these reservations, especially when one considers the vagueness of the project, the collection in this volume presents many stimulating images, thoughts and testimonies especially from Stefanie Burkle, Nezar AlSayyad, Gordon Mathews, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, where experience of the world is used as a measure to assess contemporary architecture with all its desolations and wonders. As might be expected, one of the most provocative contributions is Sang Lee's interview with Rem Koolhaas, where the apostle of architectural globalization opines on the 'stupidity of architects' without enlightening us as to what extent he suffers from the affliction or, if he does not, to what extent he has been able to use that superiority to his commercial advantage. The other individuals are rather more circumspect, coolly outlining their own contribution to the growing body of eclectically rootless international work. In many ways, the editors' search for authorial explanation is futile, since a largely invisible—though not insignificant—amount of the globalized work being undertaken is through the outsourcing of drafting services by relatively obscure corporate consultants.A significant problem lies in the neutrality of the editorial stance, obviously intending to provoke, but unable to present a strong theme for fear of excluding a counter position. The social evils of rapid urbanization are almost barely touched upon—as if globalization is only an issue for the international elite. However, against the general trend, Diego Barajas does explore one manifestation of the migrant communities through the exploration of the telephone shop—although he deadens the political impact of such spaces by analysing them in a series of beautiful and slightly impenetrable diagrams. The diverse eclecticism of such environments, providing the perennial seductions of home for those who find themselves abroad, perhaps presents a paradigm of the increasingly uncertain urban future.

Sunday, 23 August 2009

Hypercity: The Symbolic Side of Urbanismedited by Peter J.M. Nas and Annemarie Samuels(Kegan Paul 2006)

This book applies anthropological research methodology to the study of various historical and contemporary urban situations, with diverse examples in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. The book’s structure is that of a series of case studies that have their origin in papers presented at a symposium held in Leiden in 2004. The terminology employed by the editors - specifically the terms ‘urban symbolism’ and ‘hypercity’ - deserves brief explanation. In the first chapter, by Peter Nas, Rivke Jaffe and Annemarie Samuels, the two terms are discussed in detail. The former is described as an outcome of material culture and the need to explore the symbolic language of urban form as an aid to identity – although page 2 sees Kevin Lynch’s use of similar aspects in 'The Image of the City' dismissed as narrow in focus because of its essentially utilitarian character. In contrast the authors claim for their own use a deeper understanding combining perceptions of the self and others, and urban and collective memories.

With regard to the term ‘hypercity’, the authors claim that it proceeds from the more fundamental level of semiotics, and they see the interpretation of the city’s accumulated signs as indicative of the city’s state of being between stability and transition. The examples which follow in the individual case studies are considered in relation to these terms, although the distinctions made in the first chapter do not strongly determine the way the specific urban narratives are portrayed. Each chapter is dealt with by its author as largely self-sufficient, which avoids the opportunity to make broader comparison. They are diverse in their cultural context, which might make the comparisons difficult to structure, but which would serve a useful anthropological purpose in presenting the broad influences of symbolisation. Locations range from Kingston, Jamaica to Jakarta to Cape Town amongst others, complementing a series of European examples. The examples cover the changed meaning occasioned by the achievement of national self-determination and the construction of national identity through symbols. However, other chapters such as Christien Klaufus on Cuenca, Ecuador deal more with the processes of development, the control exercised by professional or academic bodies and their predetermination of urban image.

From the perspective of design education, the examples assembled in the book can tend to be superficial, the signs which are discussed such as statues which indicate meaning tend to be isolated and sometimes transitory elements. The richer areas of meaning which accrue to urban form and the social uses of space are left relatively unexplored as a source of meaning. This book can therefore only be regarded as an introduction to its field with some intriguing and unusual examples. However, it does suggest that not only could the city be read as a symbolic realm, but also that it could be designed as a territory of embedded meaning. The twentieth century saw many such examples, generally at the behest of totalitarian regimes, but participatory procedures offer the opportunity for the design of urban environments which have significance for their inhabitants and circumvent the prevailing sense of urban alienation. The ‘symbolic side of urbanism’ has a role to play, which goes beyond the names on streets and on plinths, and the ephemeral bunting of national celebration. That potential iconographic urbanity might be harder to identify and certainly to codify, but the task anthropologists and urban designers share is understanding how people find meaning in the cities where they live.

While this collection provides an interesting array of unusual examples, its anthropological emphasis might be profitably compared with Dana Arnold and Andrew Ballantyne’s edited book 'Architecture as Experience: Radical change in spatial practice' (Routledge 2004) where the focus of a similarly diverse collection was on the more formal products of the political use of space. Neither book can provide a definitive account of this wide ranging subject, but the present volume certainly adds to the broadening of locations of study for the urban image even if the theoretical construction in which they are placed perhaps strains too much towards the universal.

The title might persuade some potential readers that this book traces the inevitably monumentalising course of recent neo-modern architecture. If that was what was sought, with all its attendant blandness, banalisation of the urban landscape and improbable structural gymnastics then readers will be in for a disappointment. Instead the book deals with much more quotidian subjects, but subjects which effect more lives than can ever, one hopes, be effected by the work of a star architect and his urban compositions. This book, taking a slightly distanced mental view implicitly favours the spontaneous creativity of unattributable groups rather than the alliance of powerful egos which characterises much urban design in the developed world, and command the attention of the publishing and broadcast media.

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Eamonn Canniffe leads the Architecture Research Centre and the MA in Architecture + Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture. He was educated in Architecture at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. In 1996 he held a Rome Scholarship in the Fine Arts at the British School at Rome. Between 1986 and 1998 he taught at the University of Manchester School of Architecture, and between 1998 and 2006 at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. He is the author of Urban Ethic: Design in the Contemporary City (Routledge 2006) (Chinese edition 城市伦理--当代城市设计 2013) and The Politics of the Piazza: the history and meaning of the Italian square (Ashgate 2008). He is co-author (with Tom Jefferies) of Manchester Architecture Guide (1999) and (with Peter Blundell Jones) of Modern Architecture through Case Studies 1945-1990 (Architectural Press 2007), (Chinese edition 现代建筑的演变 1945--1990年 2009) (Spanish edition Modelos de la Arquitectura Moderna -Volumen II 1945-1990 2013). For a number of years he has served as Architecture Series Editor for Ashgate Publishing.